High steaks: Addicts swap meat for drugs

FORGET cash, meat is the new currency used to buy drugs on the Border.

Top-quality cuts are being ripped off supermarket shelves to fund users’ addictions.

Wodonga police said eye fillets were the meat of choice to exchange for myriad drugs including ice, amphetamines and prescription medication.

Police raiding homes of suspected dealers have found freezers full of meat and one officer recalled a man who had two roast beefs stuffed down his pants at Coles in Wodonga about a year ago, to pay for his addiction.

“He claimed he bought them at another supermarket and he was just keeping them in his pants,” the officer said.

This was after the same officer had caught another man trying to steal a 34-centimetre television by sticking it down the front of his tracksuit pants.

It’s difficult to quantify how much meat can be exchanged for what kind and what quantity of drugs but investigators estimated two scotch fillets could be exchanged for a stick of cannabis while a roast beef could return two ecstasy tablets.